


Front Page

by semele



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-21
Updated: 2015-05-21
Packaged: 2018-03-31 13:45:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3980227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/pseuds/semele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life in Two is as follows: every morning Gale picks up a paper and reads the front page at breakfast, then gets on with his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Front Page

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kwritten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/gifts).



> Written for gen-minis challenge on livejournal. Kwritten prompted: leadership, daily life, post-war.

Life in Two is as follows: every morning Gale picks up a paper and reads the front page at breakfast, then gets on with his life. 

You see, this is the question of time. He hardly ever has enough of it to read more than a page or two, and so back issues are piling up on his table like a big, paper guilt trip. The solution would be to simply stop buying them, but he can't do that, either; not now that he finally _can_ have a newspaper, front page, and sports column, and opinion pieces he can read without clenching his jaw.

Turns out that everyday freedom is, on the whole, rather mundane.

After breakfast, freedom becomes much more substantial: it's measured in land, in food, and hours of work, and in people coming and going with petty cases that are, suddenly, very important. It's Gale's job to settle disputes, and most of the time, he doesn't lose his head. Fair is fair, even if sometimes he has to close his eyes and take a deep breath, remember Twelve, and mines, and Games, before he rules one way or the other. It's easy to see what the Capitol owes them, but things get tricky once they start owing each other, especially here in Two, where things are much more complicated than at home, where, even between Seam and Town, they were similar enough to have common enemies.

Sometimes when he catches himself unguarded, Gale thinks that everything would be much easier if they'd just killed everyone who deserved it, but he checks himself quickly. He has quite enough blood on his hands already.

It's funny how quickly he became used to this: morning paper and real coffee, and meals he pretty much takes for granted, how absurd, Gale Hawthorne buying meat from the butcher. It's even easier to get used to power, to its pleasures and its weight, and to freedom resting on his shoulder like a stranger, a little shy and always visible, completely and utterly unforgettable.

Sometimes people in Two don't really know how to be free, but Gale is always there to explain.

On Sundays, when things get a little quieter, he tries to catch up on his reading, and sometimes, not very often, he even writes a letter to the editor. Gale is not a very good writer, and he knows it, but sometimes he writes anyway. It takes time and it takes effort, but eventually he gets the words out, then signs his name in bold letters. His words come with no particular vitriol; he is, on the whole, so happy with having something resembling normal press that he isn't really angry when he argues, not even when he disagrees with something strongly. 

You see, for Gale, power comes into your life like a battering ram; it wears uniforms and heavy boots, and it steps into your house wielding guns and whips, always ready to strike. So when his letters get fewer and further between, he doesn't really notice. _This paper is getting better,_ he thinks sometimes in passing, or maybe _I guess I'm settling down_ , with just a touch of _I'm getting too old to yell at everything I see_. For his birthday, the editor sends him a bottle of something expensive, and Gale doesn't think twice about it. After his first few months in Two, when he wrote so many heated letters, the local editor feels a bit like an old friend.

And anyway, most days Gale only has time to read the front page.


End file.
